


A dream was all it was

by Novicedge



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29339544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novicedge/pseuds/Novicedge
Summary: Byleth thought she had life all figured out, but after coming to the Blue Lions house, she had come to learn something about friendship and even love. Years would pass, and she found herself on the battlefield for such a place, finding out that maybe life was just as simple as before. That she never could’ve guessed her agony at the futility of it all.





	A dream was all it was

“I was a mercenary, nothing but a sellsword for the highest bidder. Father would tell me we were more than that. That we didn’t have to be just that, but I couldn’t believe him. We were bandits working for a more honest coin, but we were no less clean than bloody ones.

People made their living on what they could and what the goddess haphazardly gave. The world was straightforward. Posturing and philosophizing were excuses the rich and privileged could waste their time thinking about. Reality was what it was. You did what you had to do to survive, plain and simple.

Then I saw you. A prince who thought of justice, you were like something out of a fairy tale. You were someone I could believe in and one day came to love to be beside.

But the storybook closed, and I had to relearn. The world was as simple as it ever was. That life was simply suffering.”

* * *

Byleth should have left her room ages ago.

There was always something around the monastery that could use her attention, let alone the war front, but she couldn’t find herself able to leave yet. Instead, she was seated at her desk, just… thinking.

In front of her was her Blue Lion’s Brooch. A gift from all her students that in the deepest part of her heart, like to think was from Dimitri more so than the rest.

The only other thing of note on the table was an old, dull hand mirror. She tears her gaze from the brooch to look into the scratched reflection. Byleth sees what she always sees, that same detached expression she always wore. The same thing that had gotten her shunned on more than one occasion. She didn’t know the day would come where she would be thankful for it, let alone pray that its façade still held.

It was an effective way to hide how she felt. No one should be able to see her inner turmoil. She never was one to wear her heart on her sleeve, so people shouldn’t suspect her.

_Worried? Ah, come on. Surely, our dear old professor must just be sleeping in. Always the hard worker she is. Oh, let her be. She deserves the break._

Byleth didn’t want them to know how much she struggled with her feelings-the treasonous sort of ones, like why was she even here.

It all started with Dimitri.

Byleth wasn’t sure at first what to expect when it came to the prince. He was a noble who led on the battlefield, and that gave him a lot of stock in her eyes, even if he had seemed a little naïve.

But Dimitri wasn’t some starry-eyed idealist or anything like that. He had a grasp on how things worked and not only hated it but fought against it. He seemed to always be training but would never shy from aiding those struggling. He would suggest training excursions that often aligned with routing threats for unfortunate merchants or villages. The prince had even helped teach orphans’ swordplay! It was almost comedic how heroic he was.

Byleth couldn’t help but find him charming. He felt like a superior person to herself. He made her want to be better. Byleth even came to start believing in those old words her father told her.

But that was a long time ago. The prince she saw and known just the other day; for her, had changed as fast as death.

Dimitri had forsaken his kingdom. Did he know a thing that was happening there? Were the people treated well? Was the occupation brutal, or did the Empire rule with a soft touch? Byleth didn’t know; all that seemed to matter was the rebels on the front line and Dimitri’s harsh expectations of them.

It all felt so… hollow. Maybe it had to do with her background. There was never any expectation of mercenary work. It was all pass/fail. You did the job and got out.

What she fought were bandits, crooks, and the odd gang or two, none of which had real goals nor ambition. It was all just money at the end of the day. A brigand willing to part with their gold was rare, but even rarer was one willing to die for it. Criminals don’t get into fights that they think they’ll lose. That’s why they spent so much time preying on the helpless. Hell, if the bandits paid high enough, you could find some genuine mercenaries working for them. Gold was gold.

If you really botched a job, you could always run to a different part of the continent. Oh sure, if word got out, you might get blacklisted by the more scrupulous nobles. But there was always some desperate town watch, village elder, or even farmer that could use the help and would take the extra manpower.

The only real loss was the loss of your life.

That’s why a genuine war felt so foreign to Byleth, despite her real-world combat experience. People here were willing to lay down their lives for the cause. Die to protect a fort that may well be lost or recaptured dozens of times throughout a campaign. All this for abstract and grand goals of honor and fealty. Some of the knights looked down on Shamir for her way of thinking, but Byleth would be a liar if she said she didn’t agree with her or the hundred other mercs she and Jeralt had teamed or fought with over the years that all thought the same. Fancy words were just that and had never helped filled the bellies of those back home depending on you.

But Dimitri wasn’t even that. You could fill anyone’s head with nonsense, and they would preach and spread it till they die. Dimitri had instead chosen a more **real** path, and it was worse than any other.

People lived for their beliefs and died for them. Byleth couldn’t understand and would look down on many of them, but she could see their conviction and almost respect them. Animals may play with their food and enjoy the hunt, but it was as nature dictated for them. Even Crest Beasts had lost their minds and could do nothing but run on a rampage.

The Boar Prince was less than all of that. Dimitri had kept his mind. He had time to think, and the answer he came to was to flood the Empire’s streets with blood.

It wasn’t like she couldn’t understand. She **tried** to understand. She had her own father die in her arms, dammit. Byleth knew what Dimitri felt, if only for just a moment.

She wanted revenge. She needed that revenge. But when she saw Kronya’s dying face. The plea she gave to save her. Byleth couldn’t find it in her heart to hate.

In those last moments, she saw Kronya for what she was, another poor soul. She did what was asked of her, and her allies discarded her like an old rag.

It didn’t matter if she was an assassin or a traitor; she was still a human being. Could you say this was what Kronya wanted? How much of her life was her own? She cackled and fought like a madwoman, but there was some story to her—some reason why things had to be this way. And those things all died with her.

And yet, maybe that revenge she had wanted was the only time Dimitri genuinely connected with her.

And that was just the start. Then she started thinking of Edelgard, that bright young student. Of Tomas, the kindly old librarian. What were they fighting for? Was it just as despicable as Dimitri’s? How bad can a goal be to be worse than mindless slaughter?

‘Who’s to say? Maybe if we had sat down and talked, I would have agreed with them.’ She thinks morbidly.

‘Or perhaps they are just as obstinate and foolish as him.’

Byleth takes a moment and notices the strain she feels in her hands. Unaware that she had started to hunch over the desk and dig her nails into her palms. She eases her fingers and stands up straighter.

She takes some deep breathes to calm herself before breaking down, inhaling and exhaling rapidly to stifle laughing at herself.

She was acting like a child.

Byleth was always a strange kid- the child that followed the legendary Blade Breaker, that spawn of his that carried none of his charm or power. Her father would encourage her to play with the locals whenever they hit a village or town, but that wasn’t who she was. She didn’t want to play with them, and the children didn’t want to with her either.

As harsh as it was to begrudge her father, perhaps the monastery was the only place that felt like home. It gave her stability that Byleth never had. Even if her students would graduate and leave, it would still be more than she ever had before.

It was funny, in an awful sort of way. She would often hear her student begrudge their living situations, the obligations and burdens placed on them, and how, in a way, they envied their dear old professor.

But she wasn’t without her scars as well, even if it had taken years to realize them.

Her first tears she can remember more intimately than her mother, her first bedtime story, or her first kill, because all these had happened so long before her eyes first watered, and all it took was the worst day of her entire life.

When she was younger, people would politely compliment that she seemed wiser than her age, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t that she knew more than she should. That the knowledge of harsh reality washed away the innocence, No, it was more accurate to say there was no innocence. She was a child without any of its wonder and whimsey.

It was as she thought the first time she gazed upon her mother’s grave. The woman who gave her life for her was one whose face she only knew from an old sketch. And yet, she didn’t feel anything. There was some small tingling of… longing? Thankfulness? Whatever it was, it was eclipsed by nothingness; Byleth was just empty.

Yet here, in this war, was the first time she had ever thought that the world wasn’t fair, not with cold maturity but with a child’s petulance.

There was no purpose, no reason, nothing but petty vengeance and obligation here.

What was the point, what was the damned point? Why were they trading blood for blood in this pained cycle? If this was all it was, then maybe it would be best to just surrender. Put an end to the violence, however fleeting. If that was all it took, then she’d be the first to help torch Garreg Mach down.

But that’s all these were, just the thoughts and tantrum of a puppet flailing about on the world’s stage. Her students thought of her as a lynchpin of their force, that with Byleth, they could turn the whole war around. Maybe she could even bring back the prince they once knew. But she didn’t think of herself as any freer or better than Dimitri. Him by his ghosts and her from the role she was bound with.

‘Damn it, damn it all to hell and back.’

Byleth stands up. She picks up the brooch and securely fastens it to her coat. She had to be ready to greet the day, to go out and walk these paths that felt so much more pleasant before. She was there to see them in their glory, scarred in battle, and now she’s here among the rubble.

She had no more idea of what to do than when she first sat down. So she had to do the only thing she knew how to do. Be an effective leader of a pack of killers.

‘Then again…’

Her face cracks the slightest twinge of a smile. A small bitter grin, one that echoes the cracks in her heart, before it inevitably fades and hides.

‘I suppose that’s reality.’


End file.
